Which sto­ry should I choose for my child? That is the com­mon dilem­ma most par­ents face. Some of us want them to read out­side of the pre­scribed text­books. Oth­ers pre­fer that they fo­cus on the SEA swarm of "bees" books that are gen­er­at­ed as pulp non-fic­tion, so they can ace that no­to­ri­ous ex­am. Any per­cep­tive par­ent should steer a course be­tween the two schools of thought. The malaise is that there is too, too much of de­vices—iPod, iPad, iPhone—and a small dash of I Read. Es­pe­cial­ly 'I Read' for a great en­joy­able and re­ward­ing sense of plea­sure. I dis­cov­er, I trav­el, and I feel good!

The Silver Sword

Sim­ply put, the sto­ry is that sto­ries mat­ter be­cause they are uni­ver­sal. They help us to un­der­stand our place in the world. They as­sist us to learn, and how to act wise­ly. In ad­di­tion, they help shape our per­spec­tive of the world and un­der­stand oth­er peo­ple and their per­spec­tives. You want your child to dis­cov­er why things are dif­fer­ent. This is crit­i­cal be­cause they would not de­spise oth­ers who fol­low oth­er forms of wor­ship­ping, cul­tur­al mores and prac­tices. Know­ing the dif­fer­ence brings un­der­stand­ing and a stronger ap­pre­ci­a­tion of "oth­er­ness".

Sto­ries will al­ways mat­ter—now and for­ev­er. I have learnt that chil­dren should be ex­posed to read­ing—as soon as they can hold a book–and by age three, when they would have stopped eat­ing books. All par­ents, guardians, nan­nies or babysit­ters should be read­ing sto­ries to them.

Here is a list of se­lect­ed ti­tles that you can con­sid­er buy­ing for your child. In­stead of a large piz­za, vis­it your book­store—and put your piz­za dol­lars on a choice sto­ry­book. De­lay the tasty crunch of the top­pings and al­low your child to dig in­to a sto­ry­book and find hours of en­joy­ment in just read­ing.

The two lists are pre­scrip­tive but not ex­haus­tive. Just let them go on ad­ven­tures be­yond piz­za and Coke.

Where The Wild Things Are

For Ages 3-7:

*Just So Sto­ries (Rudy and Kipling)

*The Tale of Pe­ter Rab­bit (Beat­rix Pot­ter)

*Char­lotte’s Web (E B White)

*The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar (Er­ic Car­le)

*The World of Pooh (A A Milne)

*Dog­ger (Shirley Hugh­es)

*Mr Grumpy’s Out­ing (John Burn­ing­ham)

*Where the Wild Things Are (Mau­rice Sendak)

*Each Peach Pear Plum (Al­lan and Janet Ahlberg)

*Mr Mag­no­lia (Quentin Blake)

*Now we are Six (A A Milne)

*Where’s Spot (Er­ic Hill)

*Zoe’ the Fairy’s Dis­cov­er­ies-A Trip to Mara­cas Beach (Liseanne Mar­tin-Subero)

The Secret Garden

For Ages 8-11:

*The Wind in the Wil­lows (Ken­neth Gra­hame)

*The Hob­bit (J R R Tolkien)

*Tom’s Mid­night Gar­den (Philip­pa Pearce)

*The BFG Gi­ant (Roald Dahl)

*The Iron Man (Ted Hugh­es)

*The Se­cret Gar­den (Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett)

*A Christ­mas Car­ol (Charles Dick­ens)

*The Li­on, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C S Lewis)

*Al­ice in Won­der­land (Lewis Car­roll)

*The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (Pene­lope Live­ly)

*The Sil­ver Sword (Ian Ser­rail­li­er)

*Stig of the Dump (Clive King)

*The Stone book (Alan Gar­ner)

*The Trea­sure Seek­ers (E S Nes­bit)

*The Tur­bu­lent Term of Tyke Tyler (Gene Kemp)

*The Wolvers of Willough­by Chase (Joan Aiken)

I have not for­got­ten books writ­ten by peo­ple from oth­er di­as­po­ras–eg, Kenya, Ko­rea, Ghana, Ethiopia, West In­dies, In­dia, Chi­na, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Tan­za­nia, West Africa. So, let the BLM rest as­sured that writ­ing does not be­long to skin colour (eth­nic­i­ty). I am not go­ing to take the "knee" on this one. All lit­er­a­ture speaks to all peo­ple. Be re­cep­tive! I will be deal­ing with this in my next ar­ti­cle. Stay up; stay stand­ing!